There is no backwards compatibility. Sounds like they are thinking of using Gaikai to stream old games. But that basically means you can't use your current copies of games and will have to re-buy or buy a service.

And to be clear, they explicitly stated in the presentation that PS4 would not run PS3 games, and all the Gaikai stuff was very much "well we could do this" type stuff. So at this point it's not even clear when or if that will be available.

One thing that keeps popping up in my head is how they plan to integrate backwards compatibility through Gaikai, if they do it. Do you require that someone pop in the disc and then use the disc's presence in the drive as authentication to stream the game?

Given that the infrastructure to enable PS3 games of Gaikai would be fairly significant, my guess is that they would make it a feature of a subscription service like PS+, that is: your PS+ subscription would buy you access to the entire PS3 library.

Do you require that someone pop in the disc and then use the disc's presence in the drive as authentication to stream the game?

Oh that would be a huge pain in the ass...

Not any more of a pain in the ass than say... inserting the disc to play on an imaginary PS4 with true BC.

And it also would be more consumer friendly than the more likely scenario where it's only offered as a subscription streaming service.

At this point, I think my plan is to finish off all of my PS3 back catalog in the next 12 months. Then, I'll port everything back to the 60 GB fatty sitting behind my TV (it has a 250 GB hard drive), sell my second-gen PS3 and the games I don't want to keep and use that money to buy a PS4 when I don't have to wait in line to get one. The fatty PS3 will be my system for playing all of the PS, PS2 and PS3 games that I don't want to let go of.

Given that the infrastructure to enable PS3 games of Gaikai would be fairly significant, my guess is that they would make it a feature of a subscription service like PS+, that is: your PS+ subscription would buy you access to the entire PS3 library.

Yeah I'm thinking they'd have to do something like this seeing as there's really no other way to tie a disc to a console, is there?

Given that the infrastructure to enable PS3 games of Gaikai would be fairly significant, my guess is that they would make it a feature of a subscription service like PS+, that is: your PS+ subscription would buy you access to the entire PS3 library.

Yeah I'm thinking they'd have to do something like this seeing as there's really no other way to tie a disc to a console, is there?

Why would they need to do that? It's not how BC works now, and Sony has stated that as it stands they're not tying PS4 discs to consoles either.

One UI thing did leap out at me, though - there was a picture from the Ars liveblog showing a tiled interface that looked (to me) an awful lot like the-interface-formerly-known-as-Metro. Since I generally like that UI, I'm fine with it, but it struck me as curious from a branding/competition/differentiation perspective.

I like !Metro just fine on touch devices. I don't feel like it works well on the 360 though. It takes more clicks to get to any given item than the original interface. It feels like they changed from the "New Xbox Experience" (which I also liked less than the OGI) to !Metro specifically to get people using the Kinect voice commands (which are cumbersome and often unintuitive).

I like the XMB and would like to see Sony expand on that a bit instead of doing a !Metro-style interface. If they're going to emulate it I hope they show Microsoft how to do it right.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the use of GDDR5 as the PS4's memory architecture a slight hassle for the CPU due to the higher latency of GDDR5 compared to DDR3?

I may be wrong, but I think in this case the equation is:

Much greater bandwidth > Lower latency.

I'd simplify it even further:

More ram = Better. That's what developers wanted, that and the rumoured Xbox having 8GB likely propelled Sony to go for broke.

For GPU, bandwidth is far more of a paramount concern than latency. Not necessarily so with the CPU. Developers will have more work to minimize cache misses but it's far more feasible with a closed system as opposed to say, cramming GDDR5 as the only memory in a typical PC. Running existing code combined with the faster IPC of the CPU's would have a far more negative impact if a PC had all GDDR5. That being said, I think it will impact the CPU performance of the PS4, but nothing disastrous considering the nature of the system.

I wondered why Sony would go for 8GB of GDDR5 when maybe a 4/4 GDDR5/DDR3 split would be more economical and potentially "overall" a better design choice given the potential split between CPU/GPU code, but then I forgot the GPU+CPU is an APU - it's all on the same die and shares the same memory controller.

So Sony didn't have a choice - if they wanted to avoid the talking point of "Xbox has twice the memory of the PS4 OMG!!", it's GDDR5...or go back to the drawing board and redesign the entire system.

I like !Metro just fine on touch devices. I don't feel like it works well on the 360 though. It takes more clicks to get to any given item than the original interface. It feels like they changed from the "New Xbox Experience" (which I also liked less than the OGI) to !Metro specifically to get people using the Kinect voice commands (which are cumbersome and often unintuitive).

I like the XMB and would like to see Sony expand on that a bit instead of doing a !Metro-style interface. If they're going to emulate it I hope they show Microsoft how to do it right.

Metro could work fine for a dashboard, especially with Kinect standard it basically mimics a touch interface.

The problem with the 360 dashboard isn't necessarily the Metro design language (albeit the bright-green squares can look pretty awful), it's that you're doing a lot more navigation because you're thumbsticking your way across tons of ad tiles to get to your actual fucking content. Reduce the ads and Metro would work just fine.

On the memory: I thought everyone was getting ahead of themselves on B3D (another tech forum) and bent out of shape concerning what densities were available. Just because 2Gbit (* 8 = 2GB) are the current high end bulk production and 4Gbit (* 8 = 4GB) is only now becoming available doesn’t mean someone isn’t ramping up higher densities (the slow turn over to higher densities appears to be strongly influenced by weak demand as GDDR has lagged behind DDR). Sony custom contracted XDR with the PS3 as it wasn’t in production; it isn’t unthinkable for Sony to approach a memory maker and say, “What would the price be for 120 million ( = 15M consoles * 8 chips) 8Gbit GDDR5 chips for a window of July 2013 to June 2014 with monthly production of at least 8M units/mo starting in July’13?” That is a sizable order and could be the sort of prodding it would take a memory maker to jump on board. The memory maker could probable get a relative premium and could be confident that GPU makers, due to the consoles pushing up the baseline for VRAM, would be soon to follow as volume customers.

It also may be a calculated risk. Maybe Sony is going with a clamshell (16 * 4Gbit chips in x16 mode instead of x32 mode, 8 on top and 8 chips mirrored on the bottom), knowing the high MSRP of the launch unit will help offset the cost with plans to move to 8Gbit chips and a reworked memory controller in 2014 when they become available.

However Sony is doing it, the issue isn’t necessarily a technological hurdle as much a cost one. 16*4Gb chips is a LOT, expensive, and will make console size reduction difficult, increase shrink cost as the memory controller may need some reworking and 8*1GB is going to be even more expensive and still take up a bit of room. Either way GDDR5 may also run into long term production issues as companies begin looking at interposers, DDR4, and stacked memory to meet their density/bandwidth/power needs. In many ways the budget reductions Sony made to the CPU (Cell was over 230mm^2 last gen at launch; that Jaguar cores+cache are going to be under 80mm^2) and GPU (Pitcairn is 212mm^2 with 20CUs and Orbis probably has 20CUs with 2 disabled; RSX was over 250mm^2 iirc), not to mention not trying to push BluRay out the door too early, leaves a nice “hole” in the budget to splurge on memory. Kudos to Sony. Saw a tweet from John Carmack congratulating Sony on a well-engineered hardware platform, to which I would have to agree. Maybe the biggest problems for the hardware will be the AVX units could be wider and the latency is rumored to be high (CPU and GPU sharing a memory controller, CPU as primary client, probably fairly high “tolerance” for GDDR5 quality to keep costs low, etc). But that is nitpicking and they deserve credit for pushing games that allow near instant play as they load in the background. The bigger questions will be the cost for playing Online and if Move/Camera will be standard and, most importantly, how many services will be packed into the product (DVR? Media controls? Etc)

Guerilla has also come out and re-stated that the Killzone: Shadow Fall demo was most definitely a live demo - though I don't find that at all hard to believe considering then opening sequences of Crysis III look just as good if not better from a graphics standpoint on a high end PC.

I watched the Killzone part again last night and the most impressive part was probably the initial fly-in (particularly the huge draw distance). The actual gameplay parts looked good but they were definitely believable as next-gen powered. The shadows and stuff certainly looked to me like the kind of thing you'd see rendered in real-time.

I like !Metro just fine on touch devices. I don't feel like it works well on the 360 though. It takes more clicks to get to any given item than the original interface. It feels like they changed from the "New Xbox Experience" (which I also liked less than the OGI) to !Metro specifically to get people using the Kinect voice commands (which are cumbersome and often unintuitive).

I like the XMB and would like to see Sony expand on that a bit instead of doing a !Metro-style interface. If they're going to emulate it I hope they show Microsoft how to do it right.

Metro could work fine for a dashboard, especially with Kinect standard it basically mimics a touch interface.

To a point. I don't want to be waving my hand and hovering over an item to select. It looks stupid when I watch other people doing it and I feel stupid when I do it.

Quote:

The problem with the 360 dashboard isn't necessarily the Metro design language (albeit the bright-green squares can look pretty awful), it's that you're doing a lot more navigation because you're thumbsticking your way across tons of ad tiles to get to your actual fucking content. Reduce the ads and Metro would work just fine.

Even if every tile was content there's still more sticking around to get to most of your content. Sure, the most played items can bubble up and present themselves on the grid, but I'd rather have the ability to bumper skip my way through a list (that's fast to get to) than navigate the Xbox dashboard as it currently is.

Liberal use of RB and LB are the only thing that makes the new Xbox Dashboard bearable.

It's not bad for me most of the time. There are only two things I do very much: play whatever disc is in, or Netflix which is "pinned". Except for when I try to look for a game demo or something. I got kind of lost looking for the Revengeance demo.

One UI thing did leap out at me, though - there was a picture from the Ars liveblog showing a tiled interface that looked (to me) an awful lot like the-interface-formerly-known-as-Metro. Since I generally like that UI, I'm fine with it, but it struck me as curious from a branding/competition/differentiation perspective.

I like !Metro just fine on touch devices. I don't feel like it works well on the 360 though. It takes more clicks to get to any given item than the original interface. It feels like they changed from the "New Xbox Experience" (which I also liked less than the OGI) to !Metro specifically to get people using the Kinect voice commands (which are cumbersome and often unintuitive).

I like the XMB and would like to see Sony expand on that a bit instead of doing a !Metro-style interface. If they're going to emulate it I hope they show Microsoft how to do it right.

Personally, I'd like some kind of hybrid. I find !Metro on the 360 to be preferable to the XMB in terms of presenting more content at once in a more readable way. The XMB's stacks become unwieldy when they get to be more than a few items tall, IMO. A tabbed interface with a grid-ish layout allows more information on screen at once. The XMB also behaves non-intuitively in the one case where it does put up a grid layout - the selected option on boot spawns a grid of tiles to its right, and it looks like I can navigate to them, but I have to hit X first. No other options in the XMB (that I've encountered, anyway) show anything until I've activated them.

The 360's !Metro interface, though, needs to be laid out better than it is. Only being able to pin apps a level deeper than the top is obnoxious. The fact that some apps aren't pinnable is obnoxious. The sheer number of ads on the home screen drives me batty. The fact that the thing I most frequently want to do - play a game - is a small element in the corner of the screen on boot is silly (OTOH, it is the active tile on boot, which is preferable to the XMB, where it's at least two actions to fire up the game in the drive; more if it wasn't the last thing played).

Given that the infrastructure to enable PS3 games of Gaikai would be fairly significant, my guess is that they would make it a feature of a subscription service like PS+, that is: your PS+ subscription would buy you access to the entire PS3 library.

Yeah I'm thinking they'd have to do something like this seeing as there's really no other way to tie a disc to a console, is there?

Why would they need to do that? It's not how BC works now, and Sony has stated that as it stands they're not tying PS4 discs to consoles either.

Well I'm saying if you don't tie BC to a subscription service how do you get the player to say, "yes, I own this game and wish to stream/play it," without requiring discs in drives? There's no CD key-like infrastructure in place to create a game library for physical media for the PS1-3.

Liberal use of RB and LB are the only thing that makes the new Xbox Dashboard bearable.

It's not bad for me most of the time. There are only two things I do very much: play whatever disc is in, or Netflix which is "pinned". Except for when I try to look for a game demo or something. I got kind of lost looking for the Revengeance demo.

Oh dear FSM, yes. !Metro on the 360 is a goddamn disaster when it comes to finding demo videos you just downloaded. Similarly, trying to figure out where to see your active downloads makes me hesitate every time (it's on my profile? Really?).

When I say I like !Metro, I don't mean the NXE is the pinnacle of UX. But it seems a fundamentally better approach to use two dimensions to lay out information than one.

(OTOH, it is the active tile on boot, which is preferable to the XMB, where it's at least two actions to fire up the game in the drive; more if it wasn't the last thing played).

What does it default to, then? If it's the "What's New" item, there's a setting to turn that off and go back to the original behavior (start up with the game in the drive as the already selected item).

My guess is a MicroSoft announcement a couple weeks before E3, otherwise we'd have heard about it already. They won't want to share the limelight with E3 or the other third party pre-E3 pressers. Unless they plan on showing something on or around PAX East which I'd be totally cool with.

I certainly hope not. I think we’re very proud of what we delivered with the PlayStation 3 in terms of technology, and that we were able to enhance the features while still reducing the price to $249. But I think our goal with this is to debut at a more consumer-friendly price. But we haven’t made any final decisions about what the price will be at launch.

The take away: it won't be $599, but they're not going to give any hints on pricing. And I certainly don't see anything in the PS4 that would suggest they'll have to sell for more than $450

(OTOH, it is the active tile on boot, which is preferable to the XMB, where it's at least two actions to fire up the game in the drive; more if it wasn't the last thing played).

What does it default to, then? If it's the "What's New" item, there's a setting to turn that off and go back to the original behavior (start up with the game in the drive as the already selected item).

It does default to What's New - and I haven't bothered looking for a way to turn it off. It doesn't annoy me; I don't turn on my PS3 then throw my controller because I have to hit a couple buttons. It's just not as good as the default default behavior being one button to start the game (for my use case, in which the most common thing to do is start the game in the drive).

Now that I've spent this much time commenting on it, I'll probably feel compelled to try and find how to change it next time I turn on my PS3, of course.

Funny thing about BC is that the PS4 could almost certainly do PS1 and possibly PS2 emulation in software. That would leave a huge, embarassing PS3-shaped hole in their feature list though. They're not emulating the PS3 anytime soon, and Gaikai is not an acceptable general-purpose solution.

If I were Sony I'd go ahead and write my PS1/2 emulator but not call it/release it as such. Rather, I'd announce that shortly after launch that the former "PSone Classics" section of the PSN Store was being expanded into a more-general "Playstation Classics" that includes PS2 games (and whatever masochist PS3 developers want to rework their shit). People will re-buy that shit on the cheap in the $5-20 range for convenience. Non-resellable digital copies w/ trivial distribution cost. Publishers/devs don't need to do a thing other than sign on the dotted line because it's emulated behind the scenes, and Gamestop doesn't see a dime. Plus they can offer sales/giveaways/whatever as a PS+ perk. Winning.

I'm not sure it would be embarassing - the slim PS3 can play PS1 games, just not PS2. Having a PS3 library available through gaikai would fill that hole anyway, though it seems like Sony doesn't want to go that route (or at least doesn't want to talk about it yet.)

I'm guessing/hoping that MS will announce that purchased XBLA and XBLiG purchases will work on the new console, but Games on Demand versions will not. Yeah, it's a bit of a fine distinction to make but it could buy them a bunch of goodwill, and emulating Live Arcade titles might be easier than full games.

Given that the infrastructure to enable PS3 games of Gaikai would be fairly significant, my guess is that they would make it a feature of a subscription service like PS+, that is: your PS+ subscription would buy you access to the entire PS3 library.

Yeah I'm thinking they'd have to do something like this seeing as there's really no other way to tie a disc to a console, is there?

Why would they need to do that? It's not how BC works now, and Sony has stated that as it stands they're not tying PS4 discs to consoles either.

Well I'm saying if you don't tie BC to a subscription service how do you get the player to say, "yes, I own this game and wish to stream/play it," without requiring discs in drives? There's no CD key-like infrastructure in place to create a game library for physical media for the PS1-3.

Maybe I'm just over-thinking this, I need some sleep.

Well, the part I took issue with was "tie a disc to a console". It seems like you're bringing up the used game issue, where once a disc is registered to a console it can't be transferred. That's not the way it works currently for the PS3, and in a hypothetical PS4 BC situation, I don't see why it would be necessary there either. Any disc should work in any console for any account, as long as you have the disc.

xcept for when I try to look for a game demo or something. I got kind of lost looking for the Revengeance demo.

Looking for how to find DLC for Mass Effect 3 from within the Dashboard was what made me write it off. It was before I'd fired up the game and I wanted to make sure that whatever was available free was installed. It took me 15 fucking minutes to figure out where the store page for the game was, where the DLC within the store page was and how to download it[/i]. Fucking fail design.

If either company is able to actually make such a design workable with a controller in the next gen I'll be fine. If not, well I'll suffer through the PS4's interface for the Sony-owned exclusives.

That sounded more like just a reference to the PS3 rather than anything they are thinking about for PS4 pricing. But if that's the one lesson they didn't learn from PS3, I don't know what is happening at Sony.

But look what’s happened in the seven years since Sony launched the PS3 — social gaming, casual smartphone gaming, and gesture-based interfaces like Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Kinect have generated new kinds of products and broadened the audience for gaming itself. The PS4 will make it easier to integrate social activities into its games — it’s now really simple to invite friends to play, to “spectate” other people’s games, or even ask a remote friend to take over the controls to get you to the next level. But for all that, Sony showed no signs of integrating social into its games in the way Zynga and other companies have. As for gesture-based control, Sony offers a hand-held camera peripheral, but has seemingly refrained from building a camera into the device itself.

... all that convinces me of is that the author doesn't really know what he's talking about, and is just spouting words like "social" and "gesture" because he thinks that's hip. Does he actually know how Zynga integrates "social" into their games? Has he actually seen how Zynga is doing lately? Did he even watch the Sony event last night?

The worst thing about the Xbox dashboard is how parts of it are gimped for Kinext use - e.g. the search screen. It's a single row because that's what's suitable for Kinect, but it makes no sense for a controller and takes forever to input anything with endless scrolling.

... all that convinces me of is that the author doesn't really know what he's talking about, and is just spouting words like "social" and "gesture" because he thinks that's hip. Does he actually know how Zynga integrates "social" into their games? Has he actually seen how Zynga is doing lately? Did he even watch the Sony event last night?

As far as the second article goes, that guy is just a hopeless cynic.

If it were written by a nobody I would probably agree with you, but this article in particular was written by Steven Levy, who normally I would give a certain amount of credibility. His expertise may not be in the gaming industry, but he's been around the tech world for a long time.

Edit: I initially missed that your last line was referring to the other article, my comment is about the first one

Clarification: I made the assumption that the analog sticks would have more tension this time around but from the further comments I've read, they've said nothing of the sort. What they have made clear is that the PS4 sticks won't have the massive dead zone present in the PS3 controller.

One thing about the new controller I don't like: The d-pad. I don't think it'll be bad, but I'm also no longer convinced that it'll be better than what's on the DS3. The original prototype images we saw showed a d-pad remarkably reminicent of the awesome pad on the PS Vita. What's shown on the DS4 is the more separated and raised version of the d-pad.

One of the more interesting things I noticed in the presentation last night was Jonathan Blow talking about indie developers being able to self-publish on the PS4. Sony's been reaching out to indie developers for quite some time now and it's nice to see them doubling down on that.

The worst thing about the Xbox dashboard is how parts of it are gimped for Kinext use - e.g. the search screen. It's a single row because that's what's suitable for Kinect, but it makes no sense for a controller and takes forever to input anything with endless scrolling.

The only thing Kinect is faster for is 'Xbox pause' and 'Xbox play'.

XBox Glass has completely fixed this problem, for me. If I need to type in anything more than a couple characters, I just use my iPad.

I am hoping - strenuously hoping, even - that Sony's comments on integration with tablets mean they'll hit at least XBox Glass levels of functionality for the PS4. It's turned out to be a great addition to the 360, and I'd love to see Sony take the idea and run with it. Building it into the software from day one would (potentially, at least) put it head-and-shoulders above the 360's implementation.

I am fearing - strenuously fearing, even - that Sony's comments on integration with tablets mean they'll make some cool features available on Sony tablets.

Since this seems like a similar move, I am now wondering if the PS4 will feature an IR port for remote control. If it doesn't work with my Harmony, it won't be a central media device for me (and I'm disinclined to have to buy another $100 device to attach to it to make it work).